6 Ways to Keep Your Goals to Yourself to Achieve Them

Ever since I can remember, my mom has told me to ‘keep your goals and dreams to yourself’…and now, research is proving her right – again!

As creative thinkers and ambitious business people, we all have exciting goals and it is often our first instinct to tell somebody. But, research is proving that it is better to keep your goals to yourself in order to achieve them. In this fascinating video, Derek Sivers explains the research to back it up.

In the TED TV video below, I counted 6 Ways to Keep Your Goals to Yourself to Achieve Them:

Write down the goal.

Resist the temptation to announce your goal.

Delay the gratification that the social acknowledgement brings.

Understand that your mind mistakes, the talking for the doing.

If you need to talk about it, do it in a way that gives you ‘no satisfaction’…for example: “I really want to run this marathon, and kick my a** if I don’t.”

Next time you are tempted to tell someone your goal – zip it!

I think you will enjoy watching this 4 minute video as Derek quickly presents the research and explains why people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them.

…and I want to share this favorite quote with you all:

“Dreams and goals are two different things. One is a thought the other an action.”

Lori McNee

Lori McNee is a professional artist who specializes in still life, and landscape oil paintings. She is an exhibiting member of Oil Painters of America, Plein Air Painters of Idaho, serves on the Plein Air Mag Board of Advisors, and is an Artist Ambassador to Arches/Canson/Royal Talens. As the owner of FineArtTips.com, Lori blogs about fine art tips, marketing, and social media advice for the aspiring and professional artist. As a social media influencer, Lori ranks as one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women on Twitter, has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and named a #TwitterPowerhouse by The Huffington Post. She is a keynote speaker, has been a talk show host for Plum TV, writes for F+W Media publications including Artist’s Magazine, Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market, Photographer’s Market. Also, Zero to 100,000: Social Media Tips & Tricks for Small Businesses. Lori is also a member of the CBS Entertainment Tonight & The Insider Tweet Team.

Hi Lori, this is an interesting article and it was an interesting video, thank you for sharing. To me I suppose it makes sense that the people who keep the goal to themselves would get farther, I don’t know, maybe because of personal drive. I think another advantage of keeping your goal to yourself would be not having somebody to talk you out of it. Take care!